Want your war up close and more or less unedited? Find out through the troops' online diaries how they see it

One of the main ways in which the current war differs from its predecessors is the direct access that soldiers have to those at home via online blogs. Those diaries give ground-level views of the highs and lows of soldiering in Iraq. Here are five of the more thoughtful, writerly and engaging posters-at-arms.

A SOLDIER'S THOUGHTS MISOLDIERTHOUGHTS.BLOGSPOT.COM

An Arabic linguist on his second tour in Iraq, Zachary Scott-Singley, 24, understood the fighting part. It's the setting-up-the-democracy part he doesn't get. "I do feel like we were lied to about our reasons for being here," he writes in his meditative, almost daily blog about...